Cheers. Very rare indeed. According to some forums, there were only two made at this aperture/focal length. Mine has serial ST6EDF05 so I don't know if the story is true (05 would indicate 5th one in that run?). I have only seen another one around - Mike Sidonio had it in Australia.

Fine with me. Looks great. Looks like you have the 100-400 5.6 and that may be a 70-200 2.8 and 300 4. Im a Nikon guy so I dont know the Canon lenses as well. I have shot with my D700 using for wide fields a 105 2.8, 50 1.8 and my big boy 200-400 f4. Kind of why I got rid of my TV 101 for a TEC 140 figured if I wanted wide field I would just use the glass of my lenses. I ve seen some incredible shots with camera glass and adapters for AP cameras.

Yes I've been using my lenses with DSLR so far but now I can use them with the QSI583. I Can't wait to try the 200 f2.8. I've seen some great wide field shots taken with it.The zoom lenses are actually quite good but I'm expecting better results from my primes. I have not used the 100-400 much but I definitely want to test it out:)....I left out the 24-70 f2.8 but I wonder if that works well for very wide field shots. I heard great things about the Nikon 180 f2.8!

The primes should be better. I do mostly wildlife so zooms are more practical. I use the 70-200 f2.8 and the 100-400, like them both. A friend loaned me his 400 f2.8 and I was very, very impressed with it.

This was my second refractor, a modest Short-tube 80 I mounted piggyback on my Celestar 8 during the mid-late 90s (first one was one of the dreaded Bushnell department-store scopes I had received as a gift a few years earlier). I suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome but this did not matter much at the time as my apartment had a lovely south-facing veranda on the (top) seventh floor, so I could just take the scopes outside. Unfortunately, I had to move in late 2000 and my new apartment has no veranda and faces north (I live in Ottawa and have no car). The scopes became too heavy to move into the parking lot of the apartment building, so I stopped using them. Ended up using most often just the 80mm refractor on a camera tripod with my Speers Waler 24mm as my favourite eyepiece. About 10 years ago, I sold everything to my ex-wife (we remain best friends) and her companion and this is where the pics are from. Their house is in northern Ontario, a few km outside a small town, so they have nice dark skies (and also have a huge patio) but the scopes still remain unused, except mostly as a piece of 'modern art' in their living room. Once again, it's mostly the weight that's a problem. AFAIK, the scope is still exactly in that same spot 10 years later.

So here's the little refractor I enjoyed more than the 8" SCT it sat on.

Currently thinking about taking the hobby again after 10 years of being scopeless but this time I'm angling towards much lighter and smaller, with fewer parts (grab n' go + computerized easy align & go to). Something like an 80mm (or possibly 102mm) Lunt ED OTA + a diagonal, adapted to a Celestron Nexstar mount and with a single Hyperion 8-24mm zoom and a 3x barlow to look mostly at Jupiter, Saturn and the moon, and the occasional DSO. Money is much scarcer now so I cannot go for things like Televue. Anyway, like I said, just starting to consider this.

Thanks, Mike! I've had the Midnight Stardust SV115 TMB/LZOS for a little less than 2 months (not even enough time to give it an adequate workout under the stars, due to a combination of bad weather and other commitments). So far it appears to be a keeper, though!

With my real job, and my outreach job at the Mount Lemmon Sky Center placing crazy demands on my time I've barely had time to unbox the telescope and put it on the mount. I looked at a crescent moon in daylight and attached the camera to make sure I could balance with the counterweights that I have available.....beyond that I haven't been able to use the telescope.

Attached Files

Despite the large size of the OTA, it's a remarkably light instrument. Even with the 4.5 pounds of CCD gear attached to the 3" Feathertouch focuser I was able to achieve balance with just a single 18 pound counterweight. If I add a beefier dovetail plate and rings - which is likely - that may not be enough any longer....but the scope is light.